After a few disastrous cookie decorating experiences, I vowed that my last sugar cookies of 2015 would be really low maintenance – aka no piping or pastry art required. Then I thought, do you even have to roll out the dough with this cookie recipe? What if we added fun ingredients to the dough instead of making frosting?

Enter my fall-themed slice and bake sugar cookies – white chocolate, dried cranberries, candied ginger, and a touch of orange zest. I was SO happy with the end result. It turns out this classic sugar cookie recipe works great as a “slice and bake” cookie palette as well. For someone like me who will leave sugar cookie dough in the freezer for months just to avoid the task of rolling out the dough then decorating the cookies, this may be a much better way to go in the future. With this new take on sugar cookies, all you have to do is be patient waiting for the dough to chill, then you slice and bake and you are DONE!

I wanted these cookies to feel somewhat festive, and I thought adding white chocolate, dried cranberries, candied ginger and orange zest was a good way to go. They are reminiscent of the “cranberry bliss” flavor that is popular this time of year. In the future, I’ll definitely be trying different flavors!

Divide the dough into two round logs and wrap each in wax paper. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. Remove and unwrap the dough, and with a sharp knife, slice cookies about 1/2 inch thick. Place cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Bake the cookies at 400 degrees F for about 10-12 minutes. You never want them to get too browned around the edges, or they’ll be super crunchy. We like ours on the softer side.

At this point in the game, I’m convinced sugar cookie decorating will never be my forte. Back in January, when I first dreamed up the idea of one sugar cookie per month during 2015, I had the fantasy that with practice, I would become an expert cookie decorator. We are ten months in, and all I can manage is little orange dots on these Halloween cookies. They are still pretty cute, but you should see the test cookies…the final ones only amounted to little frosting dots for a reason. I think I’ve finally learned that I may never grow to love cookie decorating. It always feels like so much pressure and I get so frustrated when the picture I have in my head does not translate from the frosting tip. Ultimately, I just want the cookies to taste good. So, round cookies with buttercream frosting may be my go-to from this day forward. And I’m okay with that. Continue reading →

While my cookie decorating skills aren’t really getting any better with the sugar cookie of the month, I at least got to try out a fun experiment in altering the recipe: swapping out the sour cream for canned pumpkin. I’m happy to say…success!

These cookies have a very subtle hint of pumpkin and fall flavors along with maple icing. You can save these for Halloween, or skip the pumpkin shape and decorations altogether. As you know by now, I’d rather have a tasty cookie than a pretty one.

Recipe
Pumpkin Sugar Cookies
By Baked NorthwestMakes about 32 pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies (you will only use half of the cookie dough)

Divide the dough into two parts and wrap each in wax paper. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. For the amount of frosting we are making, you will only use half of the dough. You can freeze the 2nd batch of dough for another use, or just double the frosting recipe!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

On a clean, floured surface, roll out the dough with a rolling pin. Roll the dough so it’s about 1/4 – 1/2 inch thick, and use your favorite cookie cutters to cut out shapes of the dough. For these cookies, I used a pumpkin cookie cutter. Use a cookie spatula (better known as a pancake flipper) to move your cookies from the floured surface to a well greased baking sheet. Ungreased silicone baking sheet liners work great here too.

Bake the cookies at 400 degrees F for 8 minutes. You never want them to get too browned around the edges, or they’ll be super crunchy. We like ours on the softer side. Baking time depends on what shapes you cut your cookies into – we have adjusted baking times from 8-12 minutes depending on the size of our cookies. Let cool completely before frosting.

Frost the cooled cookies. If desired, decorate the pumpkins with fun jack-o-lantern designs. We used store bought black frosting for this, and it’s totally optional. Cookies keep well in the fridge for a up to a week, a few days at room temperature. Enjoy!

NOTE: I made a full recipe of the dough and only used half. This cookie dough freezes really well and can be saved for another use, or you can double the frosting recipe and go crazy and bake all of the cookies!

My obsession with cornbread runs deep. I’ll try just about any variation, but as long as there’s cornmeal in something, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’m gonna love it. This pumpkin cornbread was super easy and totally festive for this time of year. Continue reading →

In terms of recipes, we have a lot of options these days. I think it’s safe to say we probably have too many recipes available to us…it can be very daunting. Regardless of reviews, you really never know how something is going to turn out until you make it and taste it for yourself.

As if Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread wasn’t enough…I had to go ahead and make some extra chocolately zucchini muffins. These muffins can also be made as chocolate zucchini bread, but I have a special place in my heart for chocolate muffins. We all know a certain wholesale store sells some of the biggest and best chocolate muffins ever…but it’s hard not to feel guilty when indulging in a giant 1 pound muffin that’s 90% butter. Continue reading →

Fruit pizza is something I have been wanting to experiment with for a long time. Our classic sugar cookie recipe works great for individual cookies, but would it work as one large cookie? I rolled the dough out into one large (and very imperfect) circle, threw it on a pizza sheet and hoped for the best.

I wasn’t sure if this “experiment” had worked, as the cookie came out browned around the edges and the top. Was it going to be way too crispy? After it cooled I spread on some cream cheese frosting, then layered on some tasty fruit. Continue reading →

Last summer, we planted zucchini with high hopes of tackling a ton of great zucchini recipes. Anyone who plants zucchini always gets way more than they hope for, right? Nobody can screw up a zucchini plant! Well, apparently I can…our plant did nothing. Yet another blow to my gardening ego. We moved this year and planted more, seeing if history would repeat itself…and thank goodness we had some success! Continue reading →

For my second plum project, I found a recipe for plum bread from the good ol’ 1001 Muffins Cookbook. I wanted this bread to be pretty hearty, so I added wheat bran, oats, and walnuts. This is a great breakfast bread that you can feel good about eating since it’s packed with some healthy stuff! It comes together super quick, making it a nice go-to for when you have my problem of a plum tree that won’t stop giving you fruit. Next up, I’ll be stepping into more decadent plum treats…

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease and flour and 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch loaf pan.

In a large bowl, blend together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, wheat bran, sugar, oats, and walnuts. In a medium bowl, beat the egg until foamy before beating in the buttermilk, butter, and plums. Combine the two mixtures, blending until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean and the top is a light golden color. REmove from the oven and cool the pan on a wire rack for 5 to 10 minutes before removing the loaf from the pan.

When we bought our house a few months ago, our spacious backyard was definitely a great selling point…What we didn’t notice was the big plum tree quietly sitting there, just waiting for us!

Now, we have so many plums we don’t know what to do. Except bake, of course. I have never gone out of my way to make anything with plums, let alone buy them. I think they are a fruit that tends to get overlooked. Or maybe I have just avoided them over the years. When I was a kid, maybe five or so, I was walking down by the lake with my mom and aunt. My mom found a plum tree, picked one, and was so excited about bringing it home. I proceeded to ask if I could see it and then threw it in the lake. I thought it was hilarious…but really I was just the worst. I have brought it up to my mom, who doesn’t seem to remember the whole ordeal. I was probably a little jerk too many times for her to keep track of it all. Now we have a tree, giving us too much fruit, so I guess I’m way overdue to make my mom some muffins. Continue reading →